Preview: Sound Fest this weekend!

This weekend, starting today, August 19th, through the 21st, sees the advent of the 2011 Seattle Sound Fest, which should fill even the most disparaged of the punk rock hearts in this Era of Indie. The festival takes place at various venues around the city, including El Corazon, Neumos, Vera Project, The Fun House and Comet (both of the latter 21+). This year’s lineup includes Stiff Little Fingers, Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, John Doe & Exene of X, The Blasters, The Vandals, Angelic Upstarts, Cro-Mags, Zero Boys, Swingin Utters, American Steel, US Bombs, The Dickies, The Avengers, Reagan Youth, and many, many more. Head on over to the Sound Fest website for the full lineup and ticket info, and get pumped with some tracks from attendees below.

4 Comments

Hey KEXP,
I see that you are/were a sponsor of Seattle SoundFest over the weekend. I also heard that there are at least a few bands that didn’t get paid at all for their work! What’s up with that?
Hilary Spray said “Do you know whats its like to be a touring band that has to eat, sleep, pay for gas, leave a paying day job, drive from another state to get kicked in the balls and not get paid AT ALL from the promoters for your time and efforts? I do.”
Ouch!!
SoundFest is even deleting all of the feedback from their facebook wall (comments which are not abusive/sweary/or otherwise against Facebook’s TOS).
Do you know anything about this? I’d hate to see KEXP continuing to support promoters like this, that refuse to pay their artists! Can you explain how this happened? Considering how much the tickets were going for, this is just ridiculous.

Hi Rebecca. KEXP has no knowledge of any logistics of this show. We sponsored the festival because of the lineup and because of its solid reputation over previous years. However, any operations, or lack thereof, are the responsibility of the festival itself. That being said, we do hope that everyone had a great time and that all parties are treated fairly.

Hi — Just an FYI for any who are curious: many, many bands (local, regional, and national) still have not been paid!

Thanks to KEXP for co-sponsoring what seemed like an awesome thing. It’s appalling that the festival promoter, Benny Early, has so utterly dropped the ball — and in the process, disgraced the entire Seattle music community.

Following up for any who might be wondering: some bands report efforts by SoundFest to make good with partial payments. That is great to hear, as far as it goes, and I hope the promoters continue diligently in their efforts to honor in full their contracts with the performers who made the festival possible.

However, one band also reports their check just bounced…which is a little less encouraging.